Lab offer 50% off Marvelous Designer training with CG Elves

In something of an unusual promotion, Linden Lab is offering Second Life creators with a 50% discount on a training course for learning how to use a tool suite called Marvelous Designer – and to be honest, I’m scratching my head a little over it.

Marvelous Designer is billed as a software package which:

Allows you to create beautiful 3D virtual clothing … with tools that enhance quality while saving you time. From basic shirts to intricately pleated dresses and rugged uniforms, Marvellous Designer can virtually replicate fabric textures and physical properties to the last button, fold, and accessory.

The product boasts use in a wide range of environments include 3D and the world of film, where the results can apparently be seen effects created by Weta Workshop for The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tin-Tin.

Visit the CG Elves site through this link, opt in to the “Mastering Marvelous Designer: Beginners Course & Advanced Workshops,” select any add-ons you may want, then use secondlife-special in the coupon code section of the checkout cart to receive your discount.

This offer is only good until December 30th, 2015 – so find out more about the training course and if it’s right for you by visiting the CG ELves website today!

I don’t pretend to be a clothing content creator, so I know little about what tools are in use by SL content creators, how useful this offer might be or how widely Marvellous Designer may be used by SL content creators.

However, given that Marvelous Designer has a pricing structure which starts at a monthly subscription of Us $59.00 and runs through an annual subscription of US $360.00 or a one-off payment of US $550.00 (with no option to switch between perpetual and subscription options), part of me suspect the tool might be seeing widespread use by SL designers. However, there is a 15-day free trial for those wishing to give it a poke.

The training course itself totals some 52.5 hours of video training, delivered in 1080p quality. It comes at a full cost of US $399.00 – so the discount offer will reduce this to US $199.50 – something which again may not have even the curious knocking down the door. However, to find out more, follow the links to the CG Elves website, above and below.

As noted, this is something of a curious offer for the Lab to roll out, and I’m not overly convinced at to how well it might be received or taken up. Is this also some vague pointer that Marvellous Designer is a tool set that will be supported by “Project Sansar”? Your guess is as good as mine. In the meantime here are the links again.

CG Elves? Sounds like a start-up designed to specially exploit the virtual world market rather than a dedicated training site. I wonder if it is run by the same people at createmesh who use fake paid video testimonials to promote their way overpriced courses. Judging by the ridiculous $360 these CG Elves are charging for ONE course, this seems to fall in line with the same operation. Money is better spent elsewhere on Lynda/Digital Tutors which offer you far more for a lot less.

Marvelous Designer was originally made to prototype real world designs by creating 3d model concepts so the seamstress can preview the work before beginning production in the real world. It was never really designed to be used in games. If it were, it would include auto-retopology tools (not sure if any were introduced since ver 3) to reduce polycount.

This is why we are seeing clothing pieces at astronomical render weights. Most users only know how to import the MD mesh into something like blender and export to SL but no idea how to make their clothes efficient. MD has contributed greatly to the sheer render cost of SL avatars.

It is worth pointing out here that the cost of MD isn’t relevant for the majority of hobbyist content creators who pirate their software anyway. If those who wanted to use it were really forced to pay up, there wouldn’t be enough of a demand for any kind of MD training course.

I think i briefly took a look at Marvellous Designer before, but because I’m a kid avatar in SL nothing is ever simple when the SL base avatar is concerned so i avoided it. I can imagine though LL offering stuff like this when we get on to Sansar. I am a blender user because it’s free and open source, but i have paid premium on some software (not pirated) such as Substance Painter, Photoshop. If Sansar will require creators needing to be more 3D Hobbyists, then deals on things like Substance Painter, Spine, Mixamo/fuse would be welcome. Have i ever mentioned how much i hate making clothes?

Yep – hence my closing comments regarding “Project Sansar”. That direction seems to make more sense that SL directly – although obviously, this offer has a considerable lead time over “Sansar”. This is not in itself a bad thing, although given the paucity of information that’s available on tools and capabilities, even given OBJ support, etc., many in SL may feel this is too much of a punt too soon – which is which I do express doubt about this particular offer.

Certainly, a broader scope of offers as you suggest would definitely seem to be worth pursuing, if the Lab could place itself to offer similar deals. So it’ll be interesting to see if there are further opportunities of a similar nature.

I tried time ago this software, because i am curious. Prices are not suprising, and tool is well working, fast and good interface. For someone that produce and sell good quality clothing can be justified. For sure (?) Sansar support this software, he can import/export in OBJ, Collada, and STL.

I second what Loki says. I can’t comment on the virtues of MD but if LL extended these offers to other tools such as Substance Designer and/or Substance Painter, that would be a very good initiative. As a matter of fact, it’s about time LL offered deals as this to content creators. This offer is far more interesting than the silly Premium perks.

Maybe LL is tired of people complaining about how hard it is to make mesh clothing, original mesh clothing and is deciding to help residents do this. The course is 399 USD, if I read correctly, you can usually find continuing education 3D courses at your local community college for far less than that, just look online and see whats out there.

I’m not familiar with the product or the CG Elves but this sort of cross promotion of tools and a virtual world is the sort of cross promotion I’ve suggested Linden Lab should pursue in the past, so I’d say they are on the right track.

I started using marvelous designer when I worked in the fashion industry, great tool to display a look and cloth physics. To show your team your desighs before they start to dish out the cash for samples and prototypes.
I have been using marvelous designer in SL for about 3 years. It’s easy and fun, MD is great for making the pattern, it automatically makes UVs and it’s cloth physics are outstanding, giving a very nice drape. It’s a great as a starting point. The one thing I will say is that I still import my MD item to Maya to add details and rigging. The MD Textures are fine, sort of flat, I prefer a much complex texture for my clothing I still use PhotoShop. Like any program MD can’t do it all.

As for “project sansar” just remember that any animation or simulation, of avatar movement, and/or cloth physics you see in maya, MD, blender, games they are predetermined and a play back, so not real time. The SL platform is real time, i’m assuming sansar is too, so will be much harder to add random cloth physics on many random avatars with out blowing gaskit. So to say.

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